Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a storage container, and particularly to a storage container suitable for individual identification of a contained object.
Related Art
In recent years, AIDC (Automatic Identification and Data Capture) such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is widespread, and various proposals have been made relating to identification of battery type and battery state. Some of these proposals are considered applicable to functions other than charge and discharge required upon remanufacturing (repair and reuse) of battery packs for electric vehicles, such as misassembly prevention, copy and illegal modification prevention, history recording, etc.
For example, one of the proposals identifies a user of a battery through communication with an electronic tag attached to a standard battery (see for example US Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0267544, hereinafter referred, to as Patent Document 1). In the art disclosed in Patent Document 1, a user can advantageously equip any of his apparatuses (e.g. watch, pocket calculator, PDA, remote control, flashlight, etc.) with a battery configuration, according to the invention and use it for communication/identification with a communication device.
Another proposal provides an electronic tag carrying predetermined information and bonded to a surface of the battery and to an inner face of the pack case, and is configured such that the information recorded on the IC tag cannot be read out in the case of the battery pack having been disassembled or modified (see for example U.S. Pat. No. 7,579,808, hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 2). The art disclosed in Patent Document 2 can prevent connection of a counterfeit, by allowing detection of disassembly and modification, and preventing connection to a loading device and a charging device.
Yet another proposal comprises, in a battery pack, rewritable memory along with a secondary battery, and makes specific information and status information of the battery pack stored in the memory rewritable when the battery pack operates in a testing mode, while making the specific information non-rewritable when the battery pack operates in a normal mode (see for example Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-030757, hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 3). The art disclosed in Patent Document 3 facilitates a test at the time of manufacture or maintenance of the battery pack and allows quick check of remaining capacity of the battery pack. Since the specific information of the battery is stored in the memory, operation mode can easily be selected to match the equipment type.